Sunday, 13th of June, 2010

Tonight we start with another track from the wondrous noisegaze ov ZOND. Hope you appreciate this public service.Ambrose Chapel appears to be a single Queensland musician making doom metal on his laptop?!? If so, good on you sir! From the latest New Weird Australia compilation – you know what that means don’t you? FREE MUSICS! Free awesome experimental Australian music!

Speaking of free, UK online label Acroplane can always be relied upon for excellent free electronic sounds. Via Ad Noiseam, who will be releasing a full-length from him later this year, I have discovered the incredibly freaked-out French artist Igorrr. It’s a kind of breakcore attitude, with swing jazz, opera, death metal and plenty of electronica in the mix. The first track I played is probably the funniest track you’ll hear all week. Or at last the most ridiculous.

Also Ad Noiseam-related (at least, you can buy it from their awesome online store) is Belgian artist Fractional, whose new album has some really fine dark drum’n’bass sounds, as well as some more downtempo and techno tracks. Altogether excellent.

This takes us into the realms of Critical Music, who have in the last year been releasing some pretty stunning drum’n’bass music — plenty of dancefloor-pleasing tunes, but also lots of intricate programming, and lots of stuff that combines drum’n’bass tempos and programming with minimal techno and dubstep’s aesthetics. We had an assortment of tunes from some brilliant artists, and while Rockwell and Sabre are represented by a couple of more substantial releases, I’d love to hear more from some of the other artists appearing on the superb Critical Sounds compilation.

…And then we’re back for some more downtempo-ish sounds from Fractional and Igorrr.

Also from New Weird Australia Volume Six is a new tune from the forthcoming Underlapper album, which is mighty fine work altogether. Caveat: I played cello on a number of tracks. But my input was limited to the cello playing, and I’m a longtime fan m’kay? This track is a nice combo of their postrock and electronic stylings.Isle Adore, meanwhile, do an uncanny likeness of Animal Collective – quite scary.

Mint Julep hail from one of my favourite cities, Portland, OR, and they’re sounding an awful like Ulrich Schnauss on this bass & synth-heavy shoegaze number courtesy of the L-O-A-F Explorers’ Club. This year-long monthly online singles club has been paying dividends all year – regular listeners will have heard many a track from it already.

Keeping it song-related, Mice Parade have a new track out to precede a new album – always a welcome event round here! Caroline Lufkin, who’s been touring with them a lot in the last while, contributes lovely appropriate vocals.

And from sometime Mice Parade touring partner, we have the wonderful Keith Fullerton Whitman with an older krautrocky track. I note he’s been getting new material out there recently on 7″s and suchlike, and I’ll be tracking down new things for your delectation soon! I’m also getting around to ripping my archive of old Hrvatski/KFW material, so you might find some of this listening (it’s seminal stuff for my contemporary music taste!) creeping into future shows too :)

Via Keith we find ourselves in the noise world, but noise doesn’t have to mean screetching feedback and sonic assault. Although it’s great when it does!Emeralds’ output over the last couple of years certainly belies their noise credentials, despite being released on traditionally noisy labels. We’ve heard plenty of their nostalgia-drenched synth expositions on this show before. Tonight I’m juxtaposing them with a couple of noise heroes, both of whom take synths into fairly similar realms, from a few years back: Burning Star Core with the absolutely beautiful “Mysteries of the Organ”, which is even melodic(! *heh*) and Prurient, on whose label the BxC was released, whose track features his usual full-tilt screaming but for all the overdrive, the backing is also semi-melodic synth stuff. Nice.

In the completely acoustic realm, sax/clarinet player Colin Stetson manages to produce, with one mouth and some heroic circular breathing, an astounding array of sounds. I saw him playing on Monday night with the delightful Shara Worden aka My Brightest Diamond, who will be appearing on his next album (bring it on!) — but here we have him turning a clarinet into a pretty decent facsimile of a malfunctioning computer game.

And from this month’s L-O-A-F Explorers’ club we also have Janek Schaeffer with a particularly beautiful piece with field recordings and floating chords.

And ah, The Declining Winter. Richard Adams from Hood’s side project has been making amazing strides since he first ventured out with a 7″ and some remixes a few years ago. Richard’s confidence with vocals and the band’s development are wonderful to follow, not that it wasn’t excellent from the start (fully paid-up member of the Hood fanclub here, metaphorically speaking).
They have just released their rather cheeky Official World Cup Theme 2010 single on Home Assembly Music, and for all that I know and care nothing about football/soccer, it’s a stirring number. The b-side takes a tune from a recent compilation and fleshes it out with lovely violin and some vocals.

And finally, a new Machine Translations album is on its way, and the first (radio) single reminds us of just what a superb songwriter and arranger Greg “J” Walker is. I wanted us to have a further reminder, so I pulled out one of my favourite tracks ever, his “Out To Sea” from the long-out-of-print Holiday In Spain album. Oh wondrous.

Labels and artists!

email: utilityfog at frogworth dot com
Utility Fog teeters on the cusp between acoustic and electronic, organic and digital. Constantly changing and rearranging, this aural cloud of nanotech consumes genres and spits them out in new forms. Whether cataloguing the jungle resurgence, tracking the ups and downs of noise and drone, or unearthing the remnants of glitch and folktronica, all is contextualised within artist & genre histories for a fulfilling sonic journey.
Since all these genre names are already pretty ridiculous, we thought we'd coin a new one. So "postfolkrocktronica" it is. Wear it.